At the same time, this consumer is positioned at the centre of the relationship with the brand. He is much more demanding, and can decide to purchase on multiple channels, both physical and digital, from the most convenient location. It is for this reason that we have seen a forced evolution of physical stores.
The problem of attracting traffic to the physical point of sale
Day by day we see e-commerce overseas chinese in worldwide phone number data evolve, offering increasingly complete shopping experiences, with innovative alternatives that accompany the new buyer. On the other hand, there are not so many examples in which physical stores evolve towards an innovative experience . We find a consumer who has changed and who demands a differential value proposition that invites him to go to the physical store.
For some years now, traditional retailers that were born and established through physical store sales have been questioning the future of retail. We see cases in the United States of large retailers announcing the closure of their stores due to lack of traffic at the point of sale . Legendary chains that, after countless efforts to redirect sales, are forced to suspend their activity. In Europe, we read how large retailers in the fashion sector are closing their stores to focus only on their digital sales channels , or shopping centres are reducing their points of sale in our country.
The pandemic accelerated this entire process in 2020, and made what was expected to be a change in the purchasing process in the next 5 or 10 years happen in just a few months. All of this, creating a new environment where e-commerce is growing more and more and is becoming more part of customers' daily lives.
In this current context, it seems clear that retailers, beyond solving the offer at the physical point of sale, which we will now discuss, have to improve the online shopping experience . We all remember multiple cases of websites of important wholesalers completely saturated by the excess of user traffic wanting to make purchases online during the pandemic.
Examples of the evolution of physical stores
Contrary to all this belief that casts doubt on the traditional store, large online retailers, or pure players, are increasingly aware of the need to open physical stores to offer a complete experience in the purchasing process (from click to brick).
We have seen how Amazon is turning to physical bookstores, which started with the online sale of books. Later, it announced the purchase of a well-known supermarket chain in the United States to provide the experience that e-commerce is unable to complete when purchasing certain products from the shopping basket. We have also read how different companies, born in e-commerce, opened physical stores (showrooms). This allowed customers to interact with their products, sunglasses for example.
